


Hollow Bones

by flollius



Category: The Hobbit (2012) RPF, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ambiguous Ghosts, Durin Feels, Gen, Get your hankies ready, Sibling Death, kid!Kíli
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 21:03:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flollius/pseuds/flollius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tragic accident leaves Kíli brotherless, and he is suddenly thrust into a role that he does not fit. Time passes and although he tries, Kíli is unable to escape the shadow of his dead brother. </p><p>It doesn't help that Fíli's ghost refuses to leave him alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hollow Bones

Kíli doesn’t understand at first what it means when they tell him his brother is dead.

Mama is crying, crying too hard to speak and it is Uncle Thorin who sits him down, holding his little hands in his great monstrous palms, all blackened from the forge. His eyes are glistening, tears are trailing down his cheeks and his voice shakes when he tells Kíli that Fíli won’t be coming home. There was an accident, he explains slowly. Fíli was playing where he should not have been, he slipped and fell and his brother is no more.

Kíli listens to this all in silence. He looks at his Mama, sobbing, and he says softly that he understands. Then he asks if he can go and visit Fíli because he can’t remember where he put his little wooden horse and he thinks his brother might know where it is.

* * *

After two days, Uncle Thorin takes him to see the body. It will bring closure, he assures Mama. Kíli screws up his face and tries to negotiate the meaning in his head. He doesn’t understand what _closure_ is and it sounds painful. He wonders if it has anything to do with doors.

The body is lain out on the bed, washed and cleaned and dressed. He is in his best clothes, his hair has been freshly braided. They have placed a soft pillow under his head, a blanket over his waist. Kíli holds on to Uncle Thorin’s hand and his eyes light up when he enters the room.

“Fee,” He rushes to the bed and shakes his brother’s shoulder. He does not see at first how his face is sallow and waxy and his lips are white. Kíli thinks his brother is sleeping. “Fee, c’mon wake up.” He touches Fíli on the face, tugs on his braids. But his brother will not wake. His skin is cold and Kíli presses a hand on his chest and feels nothing. “Fee?” Kíli’s heart starts to get sick, he knows something is wrong. Fíli always woke up when Kíli pulled on his hair. He pulls on the blonde curls, harder, and Uncle Thorin begs for him to stop, but Kíli shifts his brother’s head to the side, and the pillow is wet with blood. Kíli reaches across the bed, touching his head. There is a very sharp break beneath the golden hair, his fingers stick into something cold and wet and oozing. It is like old porridge, thick and gelatinous. Kíli lifts his hand away and there is something grey and sticky on his fingers.

“Why is porridge coming out of Fee’s head?” And Uncle Thorin’s arms are around him, crushing him, taking Kílis hand and wiping it on the blanket. He turns Kíli’s face away from his brother, inwards, as he lifts the tiny body into the air, cradling it against his chest. He walks out of the room in tears, Kíli looking over his uncle’s shoulder, stretching an arm out to the lifeless body stretched out on the bed. “Uncle, he’s not waking up. Fee? Fee you have to get up now I need-”

The door is gently closed and Kíli does not see his brother’s body again.  

* * *

Kíli is walking with Uncle Thorin when he comes across the dead bat. He crouches down beside the dead creature and pokes at it with a finger.  Uncle Thorin is white as he watches him. The corpse is half-rotted, the exposed entrails black. Kíli yelps when he sees the maggots, tiny white threads crawling across the thin hollow bones, and he jerks his hand away.

“Uncle, what’s wrong with it?” His eyes are so large in his head. Uncle Thorin crouches down beside Kíli, taking his hand gently.

“It’s dead Kíli.” The child looks silently down at the dead bat for several moments, watching the maggots writhe about in its ribcage.

“Dead like Fíli?”His eyes are filling up with tears. Uncle Thorin told him death was like sleeping, like going to bed, only you never woke up, your body just stays in that sleep, forever. But this bat isn’t sleeping. This bat is putrefying, maggots crawl through its rotting insides, black and twisted, and there are hollows where a pair of shiny dark eyes once rested.

“Yes.” Uncle Thorin’s voice is choked. “Dead like Fíli.”

* * *

Kíli has horrible nightmares. He dreams that he is in bed; he turns to see Fíli beside him, sleeping but not-sleeping, like the bat. His stomach is torn open and all that’s left is a soupy black mess, crawling with thousands of tiny maggots. His face is turned to look at Kíli and his blue eyes are gone, empty eye sockets stare at him, oozing black blood.

He screams and kicks and cries and Mama’s voice will not calm him. He screams for Fíli, screams that he doesn’t want him to be dead and crawling with bugs and rotting away.

* * *

He bathes in the large copper tub, gleaming in the light of the fire. The water is warm and clean and the soap suds cling to his skinny limbs. He curls up, as still as he can, holds his breath and watches the water, still and smooth as glass. Kíli can’t hold it in anymore, he breathes outward, a ripple shudders through the tranquil water.

Uncle Thorin’s voice is booming, thick and muddied through the stone walls. Mama rises against him, a bird, her voice is screeching in a cage of rock and iron. Kíli catches only the briefest scraps of conversation. He hears words like _duty_ and _son_ and _prince_ and he knows Uncle Thorin is talking about him. He pretends that if he’s very, very still and quiet, nobody will think of him, eyes and ears above the soapy water, beads trailing along his tangles and drip drip dripping into the bath.

It is not Mama that comes to fetch him from the grey, luke-warm water. It is Uncle Thorin. He takes the towel, draped over the back of the chair in front of the fire, and holds it out to Kíli. He grips the edge of the copper tub and stands up, water running down his skinny limbs. Waves lap at his calves. Kíli stands naked before the fire and allows Uncle Thorin to rub him down and wrap him up tightly. His wide dark eyes peer over the coarse yard of cloth, half-hidden beneath a mop of fluffy brown hair. Uncle Thorin smiles, and it is so very sad-looking, as he runs his fingers through the wet locks.

“It’s time for me to go.” He gets down on to his knees, wincing as the bones creak. “I need to see some people, all right?”

“What sort of people?” The towel is damp; Kíli bites down and sucks the moisture out. “Good people or bad people?”

“Good people, Kíli.” Uncle Thorin presses his lips against his forehead, winding his arms around that tiny little frame. “Always good people. But I’ll be back when the spring comes. Until then, you have to be strong for Mama, understand?”

Kíli doesn’t know how he can be strong. He looks at warriors like Dwalin and Balin and Gloin and Uncle Thorin, at their beards and braids, their thick arms and broad shoulders, the axes that dangle from their hands, as light and easy as air. He is so very small, he barely comes up to Uncle Thorin’s waist and he is always getting nightmares and he wet the bed last week and he’s only allowed to play with one wooden sword and he always cries.

But he nods with a smile and promises to Uncle Thorin that he will be a warrior.

* * *

“Kee. Kee wake up.”

No, it is impossible, it is _unreal._ Kíli pulls the blankets over his head and burrows down into the bed, shivering madly.

“C’mon Kee, stop ignoring me.” Kíli bites down on a corner of the sheet so Mama won’t hear his screams and his eyes are stinging. He knows what is real and what is fantasy. And he knows that this can’t be happening. “I’m cold. Can I come in? Just for a little while.”

“Go away.” Kíli whispers, for he knows that the voice in his ear is not Fíli. Fíli is dead, he is buried in his own little stone coffin, beside Daddy, in the dark heart of the mountain. He is pale and there is porridge coming out of his head and now the little white maggots would be eating at him, too, worming through his eyesockets and twisting about in his putrefying guts. That is Fíli now. This isn’t real. “Go away Fíli.” There are tears in his eyes as he whispers his brother’s name. It hurts him so much to do it, like a white-hot nail being pushed right into his heart, making every throb of his pulse ache. “You’re not real.”

“Yes I am.” And the voice is so firm and insistent and full of _life_. “Look at me Kee. See – here I am.” Kíli can’t breathe, he clings to his paltry blankets and sobs well up in his throat and he can’t breathe he can’t breathe. “Kee please I’m cold - it’s cold out here.”

“Go away – Go away please Fíli go away.” He whispers to himself, a mantra with his eyes shut tight and his heart beating wildly, the blankets twisting in his shaking fingers. This isn’t Fíli. This isn’t real. This is a dream.

Only it’s not a dream. Kíli opens his eyes and bites his lip and the scrape of his teeth hurts and although he whispers to himself, nothing can block out the sound of his brother pleading to let him in.

* * *

“Mama.”

“Yes darling?” He watches her from the back, the string of an apron tied around her middle, dark linen skirts billowing out around her. She hums, only half-listening to Kíli as she kneads the dough with thick, skilled fingers.

“When people die...” Kíli frowns into his porridge. It’s going cold, he’s left it too long and when he looks down at it all he can see is the grey stuff coming out of Fíli’s head, it’s all over his hand and Uncle Thorin is taking his little fingers and wiping it off. The humming stops. “Can they come back?”

“Is this about Fíli?” And there is no joy in her face as she abandons her half-shaped loaf of bread, leaving the swelling dough and crouching before her little Kíli. There is a streak of flour across her cheek, her hair is powdered with white and there are creases around her eyes that Kíli doesn’t remember seeing before. “Have you been having bad dreams again?”

“No...” He is being truthful because he knows they’re not dreams. He knows they’re real, he knows he was awake and his eyes were open and his lip was hurting as he bit down hard and Fíli’s voice wouldn’t go away. “It wasn’t a dream Mama. I heard him. I really did I _swear_.”

“Oh, Kíli.” She sighs, a long, heaving sigh, as though something very heavy is pressing down on her as she wraps her arms around the little figure squirming in the chair. Kíli endures the hug silently as flour gets into his clothes. He breathes in deeply and notices that Mama smells differently today, a sour smell, like onions. “Oh my darling.” And she is trying not to cry, he can feel the sobs rocking deep within her bosom, the spasms shuddering against his chest, again and again. Her fingers are too tight in his hair, she pulls hard and he jerks away with a yelp.

She returns to the dough as though nothing has transpired between them. Kíli looks at her and he knows that she doesn’t believe he was really awake. She thinks it was a dream and he can’t tell her it wasn’t because she won’t believe him.

“He’s standing in the doorway.” Kíli tries, he really does, to make her see him. She stops, a little gasp comes out from her, air escaping from a kettle and she turns quite rapidly to stare at him. Mama’s bright eyes are gleaming and her mouth is a red, wavering line.

“Go and get dressed.” Her eyes harden, she takes the bowl and snatches it away and thinks that Kíli is simply being silly. “No time for games Kíli.” She cradles the earthenware like the skull of a tiny child and she stares very hard into Kíli’s half-eaten porridge as he slides down from the chair and crosses the bright little room. His heart is pounding again and the sweat pours down his forehead as he crosses the threshold.

Fíli stands in the doorway, looking at him, frozen, silent, immobile.


End file.
